


fourteen million to one

by days4daisy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Comes Back Wrong, Community: hc_bingo, Death Wish, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Power Imbalance, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 20:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15957218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/pseuds/days4daisy
Summary: “I could put you back where I found you,” Thanos says. “It’s the easiest way to break the timeline.”“You could, yeah.” Possibility dangles between them, an axe waiting to fall.





	fourteen million to one

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my Hurt/Comfort Bingo Card: Resurrection
> 
> I admit, I'm a little surprised I'm not the first to tag for this ship ;) Enjoy!

Fourteen million timelines, one successful endgame. Stephen reminds himself of the odds right before his mind collapses and his skin turns to dust. One chance, if events remain unaltered.

Stephen remembers the odds again as his mind appears from the void of never-was. Stephen births into his moment of death, gasping and panicked. The air is thick with smoke and the copper scent of blood. Tony and the daughter of Thanos are no longer here.

Large fingers pluck Stephen’s hair like a mildly interested child. “Fourteen million to one,” Thanos says. “The odds are not in your favor, wizard.” A bracelet of green ghosts around his wrist. He wears the gauntlet too; broken, burned, but quite functional by the looks of things.

“Yet here I am,” Stephen says. Thoughts refuse to materialize in his mind, like rousing from a lingering sleep.

“Yet here you are,” Thanos agrees. He, too, sounds tired. “Tell me what you’ve seen.”

Stephen’s brain is all shadow and half-formed ideas. “I saw a green place,” he rasps; he can't remember the feel or taste of water. “Quiet, on a hill. I saw a sun above the mountains. And you, asking me the same question again and again. It’s the one thing you need to finally rest, isn’t it.”

“Do you ever tell me?”

“No,” Stephen says. In the one outcome of fourteen million, this is Stephen’s role to play.

Thanos looks older than Stephen remembers. Shards of dead moon still flash across the sky. It has not been long since half the universe ceased to exist, but the lines of Thanos' face etch deeper. With a sigh, Thanos lowers his mighty size onto a neighboring rock.

Stephen turns from him. His body is on fire, burning with sudden life. He feels broken, unwelcome. His skin knows it has perverted time, existing where it once did not.

Stephen thinks of the car accident, of his broken hands. He thinks of Dormammu and the torment - not of so many deaths but so many rebirths. Ripped from restful nothing and cobbled together over and over again.

“I could put you back where I found you,” Thanos says. “It’s the easiest way to break the timeline.”

“You could, yeah.” Possibility dangles between them, an axe waiting to fall.

Thanos folds his massive hands between his knees. “Or I could offer you to the people of your planet,” he considers. “Let them bargain for your life as you did for Stark’s.”

“You’ll find them much less willing to cooperate,” Stephen says.

“It was not kindness that made you exchange the stone for Stark." Thanos observes Stephen closely. "He’s part of it somehow. Him and you.”

“A wise theory,” Stephen says. His lungs do not want to breathe, and his heart struggles to beat. Stephen does not belong here, his body knows it. His existence is a plague on the universe, as vile as Thanos himself.

Thanos watches his struggle. “I can hurt you,” he says; flat, impartial. “Break your mind and your bones. Stitch you together vein by vein and do it all again.”

Stephen chuckles wearily. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

Thanos hums at the sentiment. “A dead man cannot fear death, it seems.” As he rises to his feet, the ruins of Titan seem to shiver. “All the same, I can make you suffer, wizard,” he says. “I can make you long for death.”

“You can,” Stephen agrees, voice shaking, “but I already do.”

The Titan’s large hand smothers Stephen’s shoulder. Around them, space itself yawns open. One moment, Stephen sees what remains of Thanos’ home. The next, paradise. A lonely house overlooks a river, sparkling crystal under a rising sun. Green mountains sprawl, lazy splendor against a rosy morning sky. Stephen kneels on an old wooden porch. Slim, long-legged birds pause their grazing to look. 

Thanos sits beside Stephen, slow and careful as an aging man. “Tell me the future you saw,” he says. He looks down his arm at Stephen, a shadow of a father imparting wisdom. “Tell me how the ones who remain plan to change what I’ve done.”

“No,” Stephen says. Even surrounded by beauty, his existence is wrong. Stephen wants death; quiet and simple, no burden of purpose. But death is not the role Stephen must play. Fourteen million to one - this is Stephen’s place in it. 

He struggles to meet Thanos’ gaze. “You’ll have to torture me,” he croaks, “or kill me. I’ll never tell you. But you already know that.”

“I do,” Thanos says. He places a hand over Stephen’s. One by one, Thanos traces his scars from nail to wrist. Stephen closes his eyes. He is so tired, and he hurts beyond measure. Thanos’ touch is mockery; Stephen's skin crawls. He should have a retort for this disrespect. Something, anything.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Thanos murmurs. “To be a man out of time.”

Stephen swallows. The morning sun kisses his skin, but it does not seep beneath it. He is frozen, chilled as a corpse.

“Maybe I will torture you,” Thanos muses.

He offers this possibility with such nonchalance that Stephen finds himself smiling. “Maybe you will,” he agrees. But if the timeline holds, Thanos will not. He will make threats, he will rile to anger, but he will never strike. Stephen does not know why.

Dizzily, Stephen forces his eyes open. The paradise of the universe’s executioner swims before him.

A thumb crosses Stephen’s wrists. “You traveled a great distance today,” Thanos says. “The pain will fade with time.”

“Is that when you’ll torture me?” Stephen asks. Thanos looks at him, brow drawn low. “You’ll wait until I-”

The tremor is sudden and agonizing. It shakes Stephen from his toes to the constricted length of his throat. He chokes on his breath, tears sudden and hot on his cheeks. Stephen claws at the ground, at himself, floundering as his body tries to remember how to live.

“Or,” Thanos says, “maybe I’ll keep you alive, hard as it seems for you. Come.”

Stephen is forced to his feet before he is ready to stand. His toes scrape the floor, and he stumbles like a drunk. A straw mat lines the floor, and Stephen collapses on it. His teeth chatter, and he cradles his quaking hands to his chest. 

“I could end this,” Thanos offers quietly. “Tell me what you saw, and I'll return you to the peace you seek.”

Stephen shakes his head, the pain is too great to speak.

Thanos nods; the answer does not seem to surprise him. He sits on the floor beside Stephen’s prone body. “Rest then,” he says. The Titan is weary too, and heavy with loss.

Stephen wants nothing more than to comply. But his body is in agony, and the fingers in his hair unsettle him. Thanos hovers close, hunched with the burden of his own deluded purpose.

They stare at each other, stalemated, until Stephen finally closes his eyes. “Good,” he hears, a shift of the hand in his hair. “When you wake, wizard, I’ll ask you again.”

He will keep asking, Stephen knows. If the timeline holds, he will ask over and over. Why does he never end Stephen’s life in the one timeline? Why not torture him, break him? Did Stephen see that far before? Has he forgotten?

Stephen thinks of the pins in his broken hands. He thinks of Mordo. Of Wong. Of Christine. Did they survive the event? How does Stephen not know? Stephen thinks of Dormammu and death, a macabre dance circling for infinity.

Then, blissfully, Stephen’s mind goes blank. “Good,” he hears again, and for a time Stephen rests.

*The End*


End file.
